Kudos to Mr. Kyle Meyer, who is a young and upcoming web designer with a promising future in the industry. His work (and play) projects have an outstanding level of refinement and polish to them. The work is clean, minimal and well organized, and the typography is simple and effective. There's not really much else to desire, is there?... More

The online home of Less Rain is energized by all the rich media you could name. It's a powerhouse of design prototypes, which is especially impressive from such a small company. Less Rain has a particular ethos: "making a few design elements work more intelligently, unusually, and organically." Their portfolio is a rich compendium of web works for clients like Red Bull and Hennessy, but offline works include the world's largest victory monument for the Nike Scorpion Football Event. This firm can do anything. Anything.... More

LB (Lost Boys) cranks out award-winning business solutions, such as website make-overs and fully interactive retail sales enhancements, as if it were child's play. They also supply a little cutting-edge technology, in case the world-class design and usability gets tedious. These magic tricks include things like real-time inventory checks by sales associates, and then there's the dressing room touchscreens for adding products to a personalized profile... and that's just a sampling of some their abilities.... More

This top-of-the-froth design firm has recently (and finally) updated its website. Now we can all discover how MCD, working across a wide spectrum of clients, is known for its smart, clear thinking and precise design execution. If you really want the scoop, and you're on their insider list, they put together a entire graphic design book of their work almost every year - an impressive portfolio for a company that really flies under the radar.... More

Make is a freshly established design studio with 'cohesive experience' in the creation of visual solutions. Essentially a professional studio run by two natural talents, Make creates visual identities and packaging solutions across multiple medias that introduce new concepts or products to market while maintaining smart design and a fresh approach. That approach that has crafted some of the more memorable software packaging designs in recent years, and build an impressive client list. Simple and solid work that speaks for itself.... More

You know you've stumbled onto something special when you sense a light breeze tickling your screen. Very sensuous, slightly feminine, and with a clearly Eastern influence, MAP (previously DesignUnion, est. 2002) is a relatively new boutique with impressive and sophisticated clients. Paul Lee is the man; he majored in Rhetoric at Berkeley (who knew that would prove so marketable?), with an MFA from Yale. A bonus: he is fluent in Korean. And more than fluent in spare and lovely design. Go see. You'll feel rinsed.... More

When it boils down to the science of branding, design systems and business strategy, there are few that hold a torch up to bright light that is MetaDesign. Stationed in San Francisco, Meta eats, sleeps and breathes clean, pure and practical design systems. From the ground up, or laterally and vertically, MetaDesign helps moves business into the future through top notch branding. Excellent company site (since last time that we looked), with a very minimal, and close-to-the-vest portfolio.... More

When you're doing work for the premiere graphic design/multimedia software companies, you gotta have the skills to push their software to the limits... so it's no surprise that Method has top of their class portfolio that includes a variety of big names in addition to Adobe and Macromedia. Their other clients range from the artistic (Lincoln Film Society) to the corporate (Merril Lynch), and they cover everything from website design and branding to printing and user research. One-stop shopping, right here.... More

Dreaming Everyday About Design, the portfolio of Mike Kus, gives us a wide sampling of "big print" style web design. Contained in the UK-based portfolio is an outstanding example of framework-breaking, large scale, and full screen design work that catches the eye, and uses the full scale of web and print media with typographic finesse. A very inspirational merger of traditional and modern styles making a large scale impact.... More

Mook is a very visually driven creative digital consultancy based in the UK. Their work revolves around digital communications, be it advertising, marketing or technology... and the results are quite powerful. Even their home site runs like a series of ads for a number of top products - from Diesel to PSP, mook has their finger on the pulse of digital media and invigorates it with new ideas from a powerful team of creative specialists.... More

Famous across Asia and the West for her analog music videos, art and creative direction, Nagi Noda recently passed away at age 35 from complications after a car accident. Her work brought her from Japan to NY, most recently being signed to Partizan as a music video and commercial director. Her avant garde explorations in the digital and analog mediums were as powerful and symbolically rich in metaphor, as in their impact. Here are some more links: A news article, A fashion video, Her fashion line, A short film.... More

What do you get when creativity and marketing are blended, watered, nurtured and harvested at its prime? At odopod  a strong Flash design and UI innovation studio in the San Francisco area  the product is highly artistic, merging illustration, animation and clean interface design to create a perfect modern mash-up of storytelling and functional usability. Working mostly in Flash, their bread and butter is a slew of work for Nike, creating many of their "yo-factor" sports websites. Hip, current, media and technology savvythe sky's the limit for this medium-sized firm.... More

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best of breed is...

Reviews of 'best-of-the-best' web design firms and companies designing for screen and online. Includes top graphic design studios, branding agencies, communications bureaus, and multimedia boutiques. Not restricted to geography or specialty.